Oban Distillery stands in the very heart of the town of
Oban. The best views of it are seen when you
look back from the North Pier, when the distillery buildings come into view
above and behind the shops along the landward side of George Street: topped off
with a distinctive black-banded and tipped red chimney. Few distilleries in
Scotland are quite so urban in location and Oban Distillery's site is hemmed in
by the rest of the town on three sides, and by a sheer rock face at the rear.

The Distillery from the Hillside Behind

Porteus Mill on
Display

The Mash Tun

Inside the Mash Tun

The Four Washbacks

The Spirit
Receiver

Door to the Filling
Store

Inside the Filling
Store

Oban can justifiably lay claim to
being the capital of the western seaboard of Scotland, and is very popular with
visitors to Argyll more
widely. The distillery's location within the town makes a very popular visitor
attraction, especially on days when the sun isn't shining. As a result, it is
quite possible that Oban Distillery is among the most visited of Scotland's
distilleries: and it certainly seems likely that it is the distillery most
often visited by people who have never been to a distillery before.

You'd hope that a distillery which received lots of visitors who
were new to distilleries would go out of its way to act as an ambassador for
the industry: and help sell the idea of distillery visits more widely to its
guests. On this score Oban Distillery does very well indeed. The quality of the
visitor experience has led to its being designated a 5 Star Visitor Attraction
by Visit Scotland: and the combination of excellent guides and a compact and
relatively easily understood distillery make for an interesting and informative
visit.

The Wash Still

The Stills from
Below

The Spirit Safe

Model Still in Stillroom

Tasting Room

The Visitor
Exhibition

The Distillery
Shop

Your visit starts in the visitor reception and shop, which is
accessed through a door from Stafford Street, the street immediately to the
north of the distillery. This is an attractive area, whose designers have
ensured that the building's origins as a warehouse (or was it part of the
maltings?) remain obvious. Behind the reception area is a large exhibition
space, given over to the story of Oban Distillery and of the town that grew up
around it. Visitors gather here for the tours.

The distillery tour leads you through all the main stages in the
process undertaken on the premises. You can find out more about
Making Malt Whisky from
our series of feature pages showing the stages in the process. Like most
distilleries, Oban no longer malts its own barley. Instead, malted barley is
brought in, and the process starts with it being milled. At Oban a redundant
Porteus mill stands at the heart of a display showing how this works.

The mash tun has a stainless steel lid and is clad in what appears
to be copper. The interior is lit so visitors can see what is going on inside
through a transparent hatch. A neighbouring room is home to the distillery's
four washbacks. Here, too, the interiors are lit to allow visitors a clearer
view of the processes taking place within: it is this sort of detail which
helps make Oban Distillery such a good place for first time distillery
visitors.

By this point in the tour, you are beginning to get a sense of just
how deceptively compact the distillery is, and this is confirmed in the
stillroom, which is home to a single pair of stills. If there is an award for
the best presented stills in a Scottish distillery (though as far as we know
there isn't), then Oban Distillery would definitely be a strong contender. What
is especially striking is the breadth of the neck of the stills, and the
emphasis of the pinch between the neck and the body of the still. Details like
these effect the way the spirits are formed and flow within the still, and
contribute to the character of the final product.

Not visible is an unusual feature of Oban Distillery. The lyne arms
taking the spirit away from the stills exit through the stillroom wall en route
to worm condensers housed high in the roof space of the building. Not many more
than a dozen Scottish distilleries still use worm condensers (where a spiral of
tubing is housed in a tub of cold water): but we don't know of any others were
the worms are located in the roof.

The tour then moves on to the filling store, where casks are filled
with spirit, before concluding in the tasting room. Here you can discover why
Oban Distillery's single malt scotch whisky has formed part of the Diageo's
"Classic Malts" collection since 1988.

Oban Distillery was founded on this site by a family of local
merchants, the Stevensons, in 1794. Oban
itself was just a small fishing village until the steamers of the early
Victorian era started arriving in ever greater numbers. It subsequently became
the main point of departure for the
Western Isles and a regular
stopping-off point for the steamers linking
Inverness with
Glasgow via the
Caledonian and
Crinan canals. And the
arrival of the railway in 1880 only confirmed its growing status. Within a
century, the distillery found that the town had grown up around it.

When the whisky writer
Alfred Barnard visited in
1886 he found "a quaint, old fashioned" distillery covering two acres. He goes
on to slightly contradict himself when he reports that the owner at the time,
James Higgin, had recently built new bonded warehouses and offices, and "also
made vast improvements in the machinery and appliances". At the time of
Alfred Barnard's visit the
distillery had its own maltings and kiln. Other differences included the
presence in 1886 of seven washbacks.

In the 1890s the distillery was briefly owned by the Pattison
Brothers. They were whisky merchants based in
Leith whose fraudulent
manipulation of the whisky market led to what has become known as the Pattison
Crash in 1898, which in turn caused a recession for the whole Scotch whisky
industry that lasted for more than a decade. In the aftermath, Oban Distillery
was purchased by Aultmore-Glenlivet Distilleries Ltd, and in the 1920s it was
in turn taken over by John Dewar & Sons and Distillers Company Ltd. The
distillery was closed between 1931 and 1937. A new still house was built
between 1969 and 1972, since when the distillery has been in continuous
production, now as part of Diageo. The visitor centre was added in 1989.